


Memory

by Dominatrix



Series: 120 Raindrops on the window [18]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comfort Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Reichenbach, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 20:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2361653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dominatrix/pseuds/Dominatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Irene and John turn towards each other after Sherlock's death.<br/>In ways that might not be exactly healthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

The noise that made John sit bolt upright in his bed had not waken him up. No. That was – as almost every night – the fault of the memory about a phone call. As always. It was always the same dream. Again and again, just this one moment. This moment in which everything had been shattered in which he had believed. In the moment in which John screamed Sherlock's name he usually woke up.

At least his subconscious had mercy enough to not let him live through the clash over and over again. It was little comfort.

Yet, the noise had gotten under his skin; it awoke memories. It had been a low moan, coming from his bedside table. John had frowned as he sat up, and hesistated, before he took the phone in hand.

He had kept it after Sherlock had died. Why? He didn't really know himself. But he remembered the deduction about Harry's phone – _If she had left him, he would have kept it. People do. Sentiment –_ and suddenly it made sense again.

Lestrade had almost given him the device voluntarily, though it could be evidence. Donovan hadn't resisted either, surprisingly. Maybe she had realised that she had done enough harm.

John charged it every night, since four months. His hands still trembled, but not because he was an alcoholic. Sherlock hadn't always been right in the end. It was just too much to hold something in hand that had belonged to him.

_Let's have dinner._

John had stared at the screen for a short moment before he snorted and typed an answer. He had spent the last one and a half years knowing that Irene Adler was dead. Well. She seemed quite alive.

_You're wrongly informed, I fear. JW_

_Not at all. I wanted to get to you._

  
That's how it began. This first message came almost half a year ago. The messages came in irregular intervals, and always at night. John wondered if she had nightmares too, and what they were about. He never approached the subject, and eventhough her eyes were surrounded ith dark shadows, she never started talking about it either.

The thing they had was not healthy. They both knew that. But they didn't really care because it brought more benefit than harm, at least for the moment.

It was hard, especially in the beginning. Hard to allow the thought that Sherlock wasn't dead, and even harder to think that he would allow intimacy in such a way. It felt wrong when he let his hands wander over her body, searching for sharp edges and familiar spots he knew, and only found smooth skin and soft curves instead.

It was easier when he only looked into her eyes, and ignored the face around, because it was not his face, because it was not prominent enough, not Sherlock enough.

For her it was easier when she closed her eyes, fully concentrating on the weight on top of her. It was easier when she ignored that the man on top of her was not the one she imagined. The hair in which she fisted her hands was too short and straight to help her imagination.

But she needed something to hold on to so she didn't break.

They never spoke. It wouldn't have helped, in the contrary. They both imagined that the other was someone else, and searched for commonalities to give their thoughts rest, at least for a short amount of time.

Sometimes it was enough – a long, pale line of the neck that was especially prominent when she bowed her head back, or just the despair with which she crowded against and which she had imagined about Sherlock more than once.

In the end they didn't feel better afterwards than they did before. The closeness they shared, wordless, almost silent, was just a shadow. A fantasy about something which might have happened if everything had been different. The repetition of a memory that had never existed.

When John was alone again, staring at the ceiling, it was all the harder to accept that Sherlock was gone. He didn't stay long in this nice cloud of ignorance which he felt while Irene dressed and left the flat without a single look back.

The messages still came.

And John answered every time.


End file.
